Earlier this month The Trash Man, a local trash service company, filed a variance with the Vigo County Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) for a new transfer station located at 3956 S State Road 63.

According to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, “Solid waste transfer stations are facilities where solid waste … is unloaded from collection vehicles or containers for reloading into larger, long-distance vehicles for transport to landfills or other permitted solid waste facilities for final disposal.”

The IDEM fact sheet goes on to state that, “At many transfer stations, workers screen incoming waste to recover recyclables or materials inappropriate for disposal at a solid waste landfill, such as large appliances, tires, automobile batteries, and similar items. MSW that quickly decomposes, such as food waste, must be removed from a transfer station by the next day.”

Over 80 transfer stations, owned by local municipalities and trash companies like Republic Services, Waste Management, and Rays Trash Service, currently operate in the state of Indiana.

In a letter sent from Karrum Nasser, Executive Director of the Vigo County Solid Waste District, to the BZA and Area Planning Commission, Nasser expresses his opposition to the variance stating that, “counties with landfills like ours … do not typically operate transfer stations.”

According to the IDEM 41% of counties with populations over 100,000 operate landfills and transfer stations including Allen, Clark, Hendricks, Lake, Marion, Monroe, and St Joseph. And many that don’t have transfer stations have stations located in neighboring counties.

Earlier this week several residents received flyers in their mailboxes without return addresses warning about the impacts of transfer stations to the community and urging people to attend an upcoming meeting of the BZA to share their concerns.

The meeting will be held at the Vigo County Annex Council Chambers (127 Oak Street) on July 9th, at 10:00AM.